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@Diomede @Dartanbeck @PhilW @wgdjohn Wow..thanks all! This is a lot to take in at once! I don't have much invested in G3, so no problem there. I tried the DragonLord outfit on G1M, G2M, and I think I even tried M4 with no success. I can't even get the hair to stay in place. Oddly, the G2F figure I worked up loaded with no problem. I set that scene up in Studio, and imported it into my Cararra scene and it worked very well. Not sure why I'm having so much trouble with the male models.
I bought Dartanbeck's Carrara EnvironKit - Badlands, and used the Core to create a sample scene...just as a test to see what I could come up with.
This is what I got, and I was very impressed! I thought it looked great for a 1st attempt. I wasn't sure what I was going to use it as a background for, but it seemed like a good start.
The natural thing to put in it was a spaceship landing or something, but I wanted to come up with something unexpected...like dragons! (good plot setup for a story of some kind.)
I tried to add another dragonrider in the foreground...a male, but the poke through was terrible.
So..this is where I am. I was ready to give up when I posted my question. I have been fiddling with it for 2 weeks with no success. I even thought about returning Cararra. But I will stick with it and see if I can get DragonLord loaded onto M5, or maybe follow some of the advice I have gotten from you guys.
Thanks a lot!
Cool work, and that sky and setting makes the whole thing very dramatic!
Thanks Phil.
The theme for the October New User Contest is "Atmosphere", so I had that in mind when I started.
+1
Try this exctly as follows:
You'll now see Michael 5 along with some others. Drag him into the lower right panel in Carrara, under the word "Scene"
Now back in the Content Tab, look under People > Genesis again and open Clothing > Dragon Lord, and click on the Dragon Lord listing.
With Michael 5 selected, start dragging those parts in, one at a time. be patient as Carrara fits each item to Michael 5.
I take it you haven't watched this yet, but after a bit of babbling, I end up loading the DragonLord setup onto Michael 5 (click the image to watch the video):
Then in this one, I refine it a bit (click the image to watch the video):
Thanks @dartanbeck
Yes, I watched that last night shortly after you posted it. Thanks a lot! It was a great help. I immediately launched Cararra and gave it a try. Everything was working smoothly until I tried to save, then my computer froze up and I lost everything. It was late so I decided to work on it another time.
I can see that I have a ton of stuff to learn and catch up on (like loading skin textures! What's up with that!? Why aren't they a default load?), but I'm in no hurry.
I'll get there eventually.
Dart, that's what I tried before and two of the items reported missing DSF files, which I think is unsupported by Carrara. That's why I suggested loading things in DS and saving as a scene or other DUF file.
Thanks guys!
I got it to work...sort of. Not exactly sure how to deal with poke-through though.
There are several ways to address poke through. If it is in the middle of a garment that coveres a lot, such as a thigh in a pair of long pants, I prefer to create a new shading domain on the thigh and the use an alpha channel to make the thigh invisible. To do that, highlight the "actor" level of genesis 2 female, click on the wrench in the upper right to go to the model room, and use the modeling tools to select the polygons in the problem region and then create a new shading domain. Use the texture room (paintbrush icon in upper right) to set the alpha channel of your new shading domain to zero. Or, for something like the strap of a harness or a bracelet, you can enter the modeling room and literally pull the strap away. To do so, highlight the "actor" level of the harness or bracelet and click the wrench in the upper right to enter the modeling room. Select the problem region (and typically check "soft select"), ignore the protected topology warning, and pull the polygons out slightly. Repeat until fixed.
There are other ways but I like these two.
Note - there are products that help with this sort of thing. Poke away? Does anyone use that in Carrara? I thought I saw Dustrider mention using it but I'm not sure if he used it in Studio then exported to Carrara or if he used it within Carrara. Invite others to chime in. http://www.daz3d.com/poke-away2-for-genesis-2-bundle
Frankly, as Phil mentioned, this seems to be primarily a problem with "dsf" files and is a problem only with a limited subset of content.
Cool render, BTW.
I have and use PokeAway in Carrara, a useful product. The Genesis 2 versions effectively have two functions on each slider, positive values pull that body part inwards to remove the poke-through, while negative values push the conforming clothing item outwards, which can be good if you want to preserve the shape of the underlying body part.
I am also a Carrara beginner. I have also watched Darts video, and followed the directions to the letter. But I never saved the result. So, I just did it all again - followed exactly the directions in the video. Everything loaded and saved perfectly. However, the .car file took about 5 minutes to complete, and it was 318 MB. And this was just a medium scene, 3 lights, M5 (no hair), and the dragonlord outfit. Seems like a lot for a very sparse scene.
Also, I chose a rather extreme pose, and there was some poke-thru in the boots. I followed one of diomede's instructions (turning off the alpha) and solved it. The other poke-thru instructions involve rooms I haven't visited yet.
Same boat also. For this we will both need a major Carrara shader tutorial. I'm almost ready for that myself.
PS - I also liked the render, and I also tend to begin scenes and depend on inspiration on where to take them.
EDIT: even though this post is in terms of genesis, the same applies to V4 and M4 and other figures.
The following thread has a section on skin shaders.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/798751/#Comment_798751
Here is an excerpt from one post, but there are others. Several of the posts have screen shots accompanying the explanation. In addition, one of the posts copies a discussion of recommended settings for the channels in the shader tree by forum regular Jonstark. Hope this gets you started on shading skin for use in Carrara. There is also a sample skin shader or two that comes with Carrara in your browser tray under the "shader" tab. I recommend loading that on an appropriate figure and examining the settings in each channel and comparing to the discussions found in the above link.
Here is an excerpt from the thread linked above. The actual post has screensots so check it out there as well.
A very common problem that people experience if they come to Carrara after being a Studio user is adapting to Carrara's skin shader system. This post is not about ideal settings, although I may link to such a post that I know of by Jonstark when I find it again and if he approves (pretty sure he will). Instead, this is just a very basic introduction to finding the location of common resources for genesis and genesis 2 skin shaders that do not load by default in Carrara, how to find and apply them, and how to save for future use.
First, you can buy Carrara-optimized shaders in the Daz store by Ringomonfort.
At some point, you are likely to want to customize your skin shaders. At the time of this post, Carrara comes with the Michael 5 character for genesis so I will be using that as an example. In my system, Michael 5 loads with the "Phillip" character applied (sort of). We'll start with that.
Basics -
- Start an empty scene in Carrara.
- Open the browser tray (bottom) and find the My Daz3D Library \ People \ Genesis \ Characters folder
- click and drag Michael 5 to the instances tray in the lower right to load the figure.
- Highlight the "actor" level
- Click the little paint brush at the top to move to the texture room - a long list of shader domains will appear for bodyparts
- Double click the "3_skinarms" domain from the list on the right to activate the "tree" for that domain on the left
- Notice that the "color" channel of the tree has a texture map but the "bump" channel does not. We will fix that.
- To load a texture map to the bump channel, we have to know where the Phillip character resources are
- In the color channel, hover your cursor over the name of the map and its location will appear. Make note.
- Now, in the bump channel, click "none" and choose texture map. Click the open folder and navigate to the location of Phillip resources
- on my system, that is Runtime\textures\DAZ\Characters\MilMan\M5\
- Bump maps are generally gray, and in this case, we want the bump map for the limbs. M5PhillipLimbs01B.jpg or some such. Load that.
- Now, the default setting for the bump channel may be too low to tell the difference (just 10%).
- Just as a test, highlight the top level of the shader tree, locate the bump setting, and raise it to something like 80% or 90%.
- Do a render of your figure to test and you will see that the shoulders are all bumpy now.
- Restore your bump level to something more reasonable
Repeat for other surface aspects and decide to consolidate shaders that use the same map, or not, as desired.
- You are likely to want to make additional changes to skin highlight, shininess, reflection, subsurface scattering, etc.
- Often , more than one shading domain uses the same map. For example, the limbs map is used by the shoulder and the forearm. In many cases you might want to use the same settings. If so, copy the shader to the other channel. In other cases, such as the face and lips, they may use the same map but you might want different bump or shininess. Then don't copy over the map.
- In the case of M5, there are different maps for the torso, the limbs, the face, the eyes, and the teeth/innermouth. So, you won't generally use 1 map to cover all of those areas if you use a texture map approach.
Save to browser for future use
- once you have all of the shading domains the way you want, click and drag the ball at the top to the shader browser and choose a memorable name. Use the comment section if it can help find the maps, etc.
Nice to know, thanks!
For all things lighting, shader, and render related, I highly recommend
http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-realism-rendering-training-video
...
Hi Diomede. I actually read that whole thread a couple of days ago. Some of it is still over my head, or creates new questions. Today I just poked around the shader room, trying out various surface changes on clothing and background planes.
I really appreciate your efforts in creating the beginning tutorial here on the Carrara forum. Last weekend, I did your tutorial twice, up to and including where the tree is inserted.. The first time had its share of frustration, and took most of Saturday. The second time was a lot more fun. I was going to time the second run-through with a clock, to see how fast it was without all the speedbumps I had solved the day before, but I couldn't resist playing around at the various stages. So, I ended up turning off the clock.
I would like to give you detailed feedback. Is a PM the best way to do this?
I followed Dartanbecks Shader video Part 1 this morning.
Very useful in explaining the problem with the default V4 skin settings. Super easy to fix.
Dart, where is part 2?
My only current issue with V4 is that the Lana elite skin is listed in the browser, but the picture will not show up. Therefore, I can't load it. Natasha elite skin, on the other hand, has a picture. It loads fine, and looks good after fixing it with some of Dart's other suggestions. But not Lana.
I've been mostly digging into the Carrara browser the past few hours, and trying to find stuff. For me, it's still a bit harder than looking in Studio. Why do some listings have pictures, while others do not?
Anyone know a solution on Lana, or do I just need to keep looking and hopefully find her listed somewhere else, where the picture does pop up?
I don't know if you are loading Lana from the Content browser (ie. Poser style) or Carrara's Shader tab - Lana is one of the Elite skins which comes with dedicated Carrara Shaders so you are best off using those, they should work fine "out of the box" without any further editing - they are located under the default Skin shaders. If you don't see them, you may need to use Add Folder to let Carrara know they are there, but in this case I think you should be able to see them OK.
No such luck, unfortunately. In the shader tab, only M5 (3 shaders) and V5 (3 shaders) are present. There are no 4th generation characters at all.
I will try to add a folder, but at this point it is poking around and praying. Definately not friendly for the new Carrara user.
Is it possible that when you originally downloaded Lana, you weren't using Carrara and therefore did not download the Carrara shaders? I'm not sure if it is a separate download but I expect so as it needs to go to a different location (just checked - it is). You should be able to redownload either manually or with DIM to get the Lana shaders for Carrara (and others if you have the characters).
Phil, you the man!
I found the Lana shader, and a couple of M4 elite shaders, in the "ready to download" folder of the DIM. Lana skin now works great, thanks.
Why is there a picture (in the content browser) for Natasha skin (but no shaders in the shader browser), but no picture for Lana skin, yet her shaders are there? I guess that Natashha did not come with Carrara shaders, as I had to adjust everything, but Lana looks great with no tweaking.
Both of those skins, BTW, came in a bundle I bought in August called Photo Realism Bundle. An insane deal - four dollars!
I didn't see any other car files in the DIM. I haven't been installing the poser files (Ps, poserCF). Should I install those, or can I just stick with the Daz files?
In general, if the things are for V4 / M4 (or even earlier), I would go with downloading the Poser files (there may only be one anyway for older stuff as Daz Studio started by just using Poser format stuff). For Genesis and Genesis 2 generations, I would use the DS stuff and ignore the PoserCF files, which are really to make the items show up in Poser's browser, while Carrara can access native DUF files and content.
Of the V4 Elite characters, Lana, Amy, Maria and Maya all come with Carrara shaders - I am particular fond of the Amy textures which has freckles!
Great, thanks! I will experiment with downloading some of the poser files if the Studio files do not respond well.
And I've put those textures on my wish list.
I should have asked two more things. For M4, do the Sol, Jeremy, Lee, Rob, and Stratton Elite skins all come with Carrara shaders?
And, do any of the Genesis 2 characters come with Carrara-specific shaders? Or is Ringomonfort the only source?
Pretty sure that Ringo is the way to go for Genesis 2 shaders that are already built.
Another option would be to try the following:
With any of the Carrara shaders applied to their respective figure, go Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders.
Now create a new folder in your Shaders tab (see your Custom Browser for instructions on doing that, if your don't already know) and drag each of the individual shaders into that new folder.
Note: If you create the new folder while Carrara is running, you may have to select the tab and go to the file/folder menu and Update Folder for the new folder to show
Now you can drag those shaders onto ANY figure, and replace the texture maps with the correct ones for that figure!
Best way to find out is to find these items in the DIM and check the installed files (right-click the item > Show Installed Files)
or find them in your Product Library in your Daz3d account, view the store page and check to see what all the product comes with ;)
The Carrara shaders show up as separate packages in DIM. Sol, Jeremy, Lee, and Rob come with Carrara shaders, Stratton doesn't.
Awesome! Thanks! ;)
I only have Rob, and the product pages for the others say that each works with Carrara, but none of them actually mention any Carrara shaders. In fact, Stratton has the same product blub as the rest, so your specific information was very useful, thanks!
OK, as always, good to know, thanks!
I'm one of those people whose eyes glaze over rather quickly when faced with text-based instruction. I've actually preferred your videos so far - and I'm even getting used to the music.
But I will give this a go, and read it more carefully. And thanks for including the link!